The Top 14 Project Managers to Follow on Twitter

Twitter is a haven for active online conversation around project management and managing projects, but you have to follow the right kinds of accounts — and thus interact with the right people — if you want to get the most out of it. Over the past several years I’ve tweeted a lot under my own name, plus I’ve run Twitter accounts for several companies, so I’ve had some experience in finding the pure signal among all the noise.

To help you get tapped into the right conversations, I took a hard look at the thriving project management community on Twitter. I came up with this list of excellent accounts to follow.

My Criteria for Inclusion

The four main things I looked for were:

Relevant information. Does this person consistently share information relevant to the project management community? Mind you, that doesn’t mean every Tweet is on that topic; many of the people listed below also share good information on business leadership, software development, Agile methods, and so on — as well as bits of their personal life.

Conversational quality. In my experience, some of the best people to follow on Twitter are those who at least engage you in conversation. It’s amazing what a difference it makes when a person retweets others, responds to queries, or occasionally says, “Thank you.” (There are a few accounts below that have little to no conversation, but I included them since I thought the information they share is of consistently high quality.)

Steady activity. I didn’t include any accounts that had been dormant for weeks, and I only included accounts that had made at least a few thousand tweets.

Plenty of followers. I set the minimum at 2,000 followers. Folks who can draw that many followers must be doing something right.

Hopefully this would go without saying, but just to be crystal-clear: My criteria meant that I wasn’t looking for the best project managers who happen to be on Twitter, but rather project management-oriented people who run the best accounts to follow on Twitter. So if you know (or are!) a world-class project manager whose Twitter following happens to be modest, please don’t be offended. In fact, please let us know about that Twitter account in the comments. The more, the merrier.

Two more caveats: First, based on my own language limitations, I restricted myself to accounts that are at least mostly in English. I did see project management conversations that looked interesting being conducted in Spanish, Dutch, and Italian. To dig in deeper on non-English conversations, you can use Twitter’s advanced search feature, enter the keywords or hashtags of your choice, and restrict your search to any one of dozens of languages. Second, although I didn’t see much of this in the project management community, I weeded out people with the bad taste to call themselves a “guru” or “visionary” in their Twitter bios. I prefer my Twitter correspondents — in any field — to have a little more humor and a little more humility than that.

The List: Top 14 Project Management Accounts on Twitter

Here they are: my choice for the best project management Twitter accounts. They are presented in descending order, based on number of followers.

Listed: 253 (This indicates how many times an account has been placed on public Twitter lists by other users. The more lists, the more people think an account is worth keeping track of.)

Notes: Tirado is a podcaster at The Project Box who also writes for Psychology Today on workplace issues. His timeline isn’t really interactive — just a steady stream of headlines on project management, human performance, and related topics.

Notes: Sy shares a lot of different material via Twitter: technology news, general business articles, interesting tidbits from the wider world, his SlideShare presentations, and snapshots from his Instagram feed.

Notes: Harrin uses a friendly tone as she shares her work in project management and interacts with other people in the field. Many of her links are to posts from her own blog, A Girl’s Guide to Project Management, which she has maintained for several years, as well as guest posts she has published elsewhere.

Notes: Scott makes good on her claim in her bio, bringing a lot of enthusiasm to sharing all sorts of news and insights on project management, business in general, and a few side topics that are just for fun. She also posts many job listings for project managers and business analysts.

Notes: Siddiqi shares a range of articles in his areas of interest, including the human side of project planning and execution. Generous with retweets, with a light sprinkling of tweets on other subjects.

Bio: Project Leadership Coach and author of The Project Management Coaching Workbook. I help project managers step up and unleash their leadership genius.

Location: London

Joined Twitter: 2010

Followers: 4.3k

Tweets: 6.6k

Listed: 224

Notes: Madsen is the author of the forthcoming book, The Power of Project Leadership. She comments energetically on articles (including her own) about various aspects of project and business leadership.

Notes: Harned is the author of The Good Project Manager and an organizer of the Digital PM Summit to be held in Austin in October 2014. His stream includes a nice blend of personal commentary on project management issues, his family, and his work with his colleagues.

Notes: The profession of project management isn’t as well established in Africa as in Europe or North America, but Ihejirika is doing more than his part to change that. For instance Ihejirika is promoting awareness for the Women in Project Management Africa Conference to be held in November 2014. Also an avid football (soccer) fan.

Other Ways to find Great Project Managers on Twitter

I collected all of the above accounts onto a single Twitter list, which you can follow with one click rather than following each account individually. I also encourage you to search on some of the popular hashtags that project managers use on Twitter, including #pmot (which stands for “project managers of Twitter”), #projectmanagement, and #PMchat.

The weekly #PMchat, by the way, convenes at noon Eastern time every Friday. You can follow that hashtag on Twitter to see the running commentary by your peers as they chime in on questions posed by the moderator. In my experience, such chats are a great way to find like-minded people to follow.

Now I’d like your input, because I’ve probably overlooked some worthy project managers who meet the criteria laid out above. Who have I missed? I look forward to finding out from your comments.